Page 151 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

148 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

used by the Persians who complained of its inadequacy compared with the
more elaborately equipped airfields to which they were accustomed. Although

the Persian army was probably, next to the American, the best equipped in the
world, it had had no fighting experience. Dhufar provided it with a training
ground to gain such experience; and in order to expose as many troops as
possible to campaign conditions, the Persian government rotated the Persian
contingent every three months. While this may have suited the shah’s conveni­
ence as a means of keeping his army usefully occupied, it meant that the
Persian troops were withdrawn from Dhufar just as they were beginning to

learn something about the country and how to fight in it. It also meant that the
Persians never remained long enough to begin to understand the Dhufaris, and
perhaps, as a result, to moderate the contempt in which they openly held them.
On their side the Dhufaris felt considerable bitterness over the damage caused
up on th&jabal by the Persians’ excessive reliance upon artillery fire to support

their operations. Yet in the final judgement the Persian contribution was not
insignificant, and it was paid for in heavy casualties. The total figure for Persian
losses in the campaign was never made public, but in the twelve months from
March 1975 to March 1976 twenty-five officers and 186 other ranks were
killed. Omani military losses for the five years from January 1971 to April 1976
totalled 196 killed and 584 wounded.
By the summer of 1975 the Dhufari liberation movement was virtually back
to where it had started from ten years earlier. It was still being supported by the

Soviet Union, through the medium of the PDRY, but Russian help was
confined to arms and other supplies, and the Russians were shortly to hand
over their training and advisory functions to the Cubans. (The PFLO’s
original patron, the PDRY, had fallen upon such miserable economic times
that it could do little to help its proteges, materially or financially.) Defections

were also seriously curbing the PFLO’s ability to mount any kind of serious
operations in Dhufar. By the end of 1974 the number of defectors exceeded
1,000, and by the following July, so it was estimated at the headquarters of the
S AF Dhufar Brigade at Umm al-Ghawarif, near Salalah, there were fewer man
a hundred guerrillas active in central and eastern Dhufar. The main guerrilla
force west of the Hornbeam Line was reckoned to be about 500 strong,
supported by 300-400 South Yemenis, most of them from the PDRY regu ar

army. At the end of the monsoon season in October 1975 the Dhufar Briga e
began what was to be its last major drive against the PFLO in the west.
two-pronged attack was launched into the border region from Sarfait in e
north and the coast in the south. It proved completely suc^es^ u ’ ,
December the main PFLO guerrilla force had been destroyed, an e 0

Yemeni troops had beaten a retreat across the border. Ninety-four guerri
gave themselves up in November 1975, another thirty-six in Decern er’p" q
fewer than 145 in January 1976. Among the last were a member 0 e .
general command, Ahmad Ali Suhail Majauda, and the military com